What Orpheus did not know, of course,
was that she had flirted with death,
that the love-bite of the needle had already
pierced her skin, and nothing could go back
to the time before. But at the end, he knew—
of course he did: the last image that he saw
before losing her forever was desire,
naked in her eyes as she took death
in her mouth
and smiled.
Sanda Moore Coleman has been a working writer and editor for more than 25 years. In 2011, Joan Silber selected her work for the Maureen Egen Writers Exchange prize in fiction from Poets & Writers magazine. More recently, her poems have appeared in Midwestern Gothic and Three Drops from a Cauldron, and are forthcoming in Alternating Current. Presently she is the theatre commentator for her local public radio station, and is the founder and director of a young playwrights festival, which features original work from local high school students.
Lonesome October Lit 